There had always been a neat division between my current and former lives. The apartment I’d lived in as a human had burned down, so there was no tie left to that time. My only encounters with Cyrus had taken place at the hospital, where I no longer worked; at his home, which I assumed now belonged to Dahlia and therefore I was in no danger of visiting; and in the alley outside the bookshop, where he’d cut my heart out, a place I strenuously avoided. In my mind there were Cyrus Spaces and Nathan Spaces, and they rarely overlapped. To have the two collide so violently and under such stressful circumstances was…well, it was just plain creepy.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped at the sound of Max’s voice and turned to see him stretch sleepily and scratch his stomach.

I nodded to the open door. “Visiting the scene of my nightmares.”

Max chuckled. “Aw, the little asshole’s all tuckered out.”

“You were supposed to be nice to him,” I admonished. Though I shouldn’t care how they treated Cyrus, so long as they left him alive, every time I tried to make myself indifferent to him I remembered the dead girl in the desert and the pain her death had caused him.

Max didn’t have that problem. “Well, he was supposed to be dead. If he can’t return common courtesy, why should I?”

“He’s different now.” I wondered if he really slept, or if he was just faking it, and listening to every word we said.

With a deep, pained sigh, Max shook his head. “What is it with you and this guy, Carrie? I mean, I know he’s your—was your—sire, but he’s not anymore. And after the stuff he did to you, and what he’s doing to Nathan now…why can’t you just let him go?”

Whatever hackles are, mine were raised by that comment. I knew I was being overly defensive, but I couldn’t help it. My feelings for Cyrus, no matter how convoluted, were something I protected like a cherished family heirloom. I closed the door as quietly as I could and faced Max. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Explain it to me in a way I would. We’ve got nothing but time.” He leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, daring me in his cocky, silent way to defy him.

I could have brushed him off with a simple refusal, but that would have closed off a part of me to him, and that was something I was unwilling to do. Max was a friend, and it wasn’t as if I had those in spades these days.